The Party Of Small Minds, Not Small Government
Youth support for Republicans first cratered in the Northeast, and has led to the virtual extinction of elected GOP officials there. In 1999, there were 12 House Republicans from New York. Today there are 3. These losses aren’t very surprising given that New York’s youth voted Democratic by almost 80% last year. Parts of New York, like the upstate region and my home, the Long Island suburbs, are fiscally conservative and socially moderate. They were once solid Republican districts. They are all Democratic now, because Republican positions on a number of social issues (among them gay rights) run very much to the right of their own views and have turned away 8 in 10 young voters.
What happened in the Northeast is now spreading throughout the country, most notably in the parts of the South with the highest levels of young, college educated voters. In North Carolina, 72% of voters under 30 voted for Obama. McCain won every other age group, but this didn’t matter; the youth vote offset the support of older voters. As the voters of 2008 who were 65 and older (and voted for McCain by 56%) are replaced with younger voters, Democratic margins in North Carolina are likely to improve. The Tar Heel state could, in the next few election cycles, become a solid blue state and will likely be joined by Virginia (where Obama won 60% of the youth vote). Similar margins among the young were found out West, with Obama winning more than two-thirds of young voters in the battleground states of New Mexico and Colorado. These two former red states will gain electoral votes in the future and will be vital for many elections to come. Republicans can no longer afford to lose the youth by a landslide.
Many Republicans feel that winning young voters through more modern positions on issues like gay rights will alienate evangelicals, the “backbone” of the party. This assertion may be correct in the near-term, but it overlooks the future. In future election cycles, evangelical voters will not as significant a voting block as they have been in the past. The Pew Research Group’s Religious Landscape Survey, showed that the percentage of evangelicals under the age of 30 has fallen from 22% in the 1970s to 17% today and underscores a falling population of evangelicals.
Youths who still identify as evangelical are far more open-minded than their parents. 26% support marriage equality (up from 9% among evangelicals over 30) and many more support civil unions.
These voters also don’t consider social issues to be as important as their parents do. This is best shown by the rise of the pastor Rick Warren. Warren, though criticized recently by liberals for his support for Prop 8, is largely a liberal himself. He stresses fighting global warming and using big government to end poverty; opposition to gay rights is not a “litmus test”.
The evangelical population is falling, young evangelicals are more liberal, and new evangelical leaders are moving away from a central focus on dogma. Republicans who argue against supporting gay rights for fear of losing evangelicals are mortgaging their own future; they are turning away younger generations in exchange for a shrinking voting block.
As we all know by now, the past election focused on the issue of change. The Republicans lost much of the youth by not offering the 21st century change that young voters wanted. Let’s show young people that Republicans are in sync with their modern world by leading the charge for gay rights and equality for all. We can compete for their votes again by showing them that we are a party of small government instead of a party of small minds.